The Infiltrator

There will hardly be a single review of “The Infiltrator” that
does not make reference to its Bryan Cranston irony—he became famous for playing the brains behind a powerful drug ring
on “Breaking Bad," and now portrays a real-life federal agent who went undercover to bring down the narcotics empire of infamous kingpin
Pablo Escobar. It is both an intriguing hook and an impressive performance, but
not enough to overcome the familiarity of the material. Considering
that this is a story of a man in a situation where even the most benign situations
are fraught with intense peril bubbling just beneath the surface, it is a
little disappointing that the film itself never quite demonstrates a similar
degree of danger.

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When we first see federal agent Robert Mazur (Cranston) in 1986,
he is working undercover on a drug bust that almost goes sideways when the wire
he is wearing begins to burn a hole in his chest. Although the injuries that he
sustains from that excursion are enough to earn him an early retirement to
spend with his wife, Evelyn (Juliet Aubrey), and their two kids, he still wants
to stay on and eventually hits upon a genius move in the war on drugs. In
the past, the cops and feds have been going after the drugs themselves, and
while halting the shipment of a few hundred pounds of cocaine may look good for
the cameras, the ugly reality is that there's much our there that anything seized can be replaced on the streets in no time at all. Mazur’s idea
is to instead focus on going after the money itself, on the basis that if he can
tap into how the dealers are laundering the insane amounts of cash being
generated, he could possibly follow that trail all the way up to the kingpins
like Escobar and use that information to build a case. To this end, he
reinvents himself as Bob Musella, a seemingly upright businessman with the
ability to launder hundreds of millions in drug money by funneling it into a
labyrinth of business investments.

Sure enough, with his glad-handing manner and patina of success,
Mazur/Musella is able to make contact with a couple of low-level members of
Escobar’s infamous Medellin cartel and they are suitably impressed enough to
help him work his way up through the ranks, eventually meeting and befriending
trusted Escobar lieutenant Roberto Alcaino (Benjamin Bratt). As he quietly and
methodically builds his case while playing the part of Musella to the hilt,
Mazur is constantly aware that his performance has to be spot-on and that even
the slightest slip can have unintended consequences. Early on in his
infiltration, for example, Mazur, in an attempt to remain loyal to his real
wife, begs off having sex with a stripper provided by one of his unsuspecting
contacts by claiming that he has a fiancee to whom he wants to be faithful.
Eventually, this hastily conceived ruse results in Mazur being given his own
federally issued fiancée in Kathy Ertz (Diane Kruger), another undercover agent—on her first mission in the field, no
less—whose life depends on his ability to convince others that he is something
other than what he actually is. Even as Mazur gets closer and closer to the
final big bust, there is still the possibility that everything could blow up in
an instant—Escobar money manager Javier Ospina (Yul Vasquez), for one, doesn’t
trust the newcomer from the first moment he sees him, and his skepticism hangs
in the air like the blade of a guillotine.

The basic problem with “The Infiltrator” is that even though it
is based on a true story, there is still nevertheless a been-there, done-that
quality to a lot of the events depicted. Ellen Brown Furman’s screenplay too
often plays like an amalgamation of “Scarface,” “Donnie Brasco,” “The Departed”
and any number of episodes of “Miami Vice,” and when it seems to begin moving
into somewhat more uncharted waters—such as a scene in which Mazur’s real and
ersatz wives wind up meeting—nothing comes of it. For his part, director Brad
Furman, whose previous credits include the forgettable likes of “The Lincoln
Lawyer” and “Runner, Runner,” handles the material in a slick but impersonal
style that gets the job done, I suppose, but never quite conveys the constant
state of danger that presumably defined Mazur‘s life undercover. Of course,
considering that the film is based on Mazur’s own memoir, his fate is clearly
not in doubt to anyone privy to that information going in. But, even factoring
that in, there is too often a distinct lack of tension to the material,
especially when one compares it to something like “Donnie Brasco,” which told a
similar real-life story of an undercover agent in constant danger of being
revealed but which still managed to maintain a level of suspense throughout.

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What does work in “The Infiltrator” is the impressive lead
performance by Bryan Cranston as Mazur. It's a tricky character to pull off
because for large chunks of the film, he is essentially delivering two
performances at the same time—besides playing Mazur, he is also playing Mazur
playing Musella—and for the film to have any chance of working, he has to be
completely believable in both roles. As it turns out, the years he spent
playing Walter White, a mild-mannered family man who transforms himself into a
vicious criminal, pay off further dividends here as Cranston is able to
skillfully shift between the personas he is embodying without calling undue
attention to them. In the single best scene in the film, his quicksilver
ability to go from affable to nasty is beautifully displayed when Mazur is
caught with his real wife by one of Escobar’s colleagues and forced to
create a violent scene with a waiter in order to get out of the situation
before too many questions are asked. It is a showy scene that might have
been implausible in the wrong hands, but Cranston shifts gears from the mild to
the murderous so subtly and yet so violently that it takes your breath away to
watch him do it.

Since “The Infiltrator” is one of the few serious-minded and
adult-oriented major films to come out in a summer filled with the usual array
of silly junk aimed at kids on summer break, I almost hesitate to come down
against it. Again, it does have its worthwhile aspects, such as the strong
performance from Cranston and a well-played turn from the perennially
underrated Diane Kruger as the phony fiancée. And yet, the film as a whole just
never quite overcomes the inherent familiarity of its premise to become its own
unique thing. Those looking for a story equal to Cranston’s contributions to it
are liable to come away from it feeling slightly disappointed.